Hi, I have never used Google Webmasters nor submit any sitemaps. My last website is about 3 months old, it have more then 900.000 pages but Google index only around 180.000 pages. I think I want to try to submit sitemaps to get a faster index rate. My questions are: Is that good for websites with lot of pages and content like mine? If so, to use .xml .html or .txt sitemaps? How much URL's can I set per one sitemap? (I have 900.000) Can I set the main sitemap to link to the rest of the sitemaps? Do I need to have a link for the sitemaps in the website? My website have updated content every hour, should I use some kinda of automatic sitemaps? Is it fine to make RSS with those sitemaps? If I am using Google Webmaster Tools it may hurt the website or only to help it? (including submit sitemap). Do I need to submit every new sitemap? (Can I just put all sitemap links on 1 sitemap and it will auto update?) I will be happy to get more advises and tips Thanks, Metros
its .xml, there's no limit on how many you can submit but you only submit your sites sitemap. Google will decided what pages to index, its a good tool and the benefit is, your pages get index faster and correctly. for a lot of those questions you should check out the FAQ section for google webmasters.
Hi, I certainly checked their FAQ's, tho I prefer to hear some one with experience that using it for a while, even better some one with lot of pages.
In fact there are limitations! 50000 URL and/or 10mb of data in your sitemap.xml file. Passed those values, your stemap files will have to be splitted and an index will have to be created. Consider looking at the documentation at Goggle's webmaster tools, it's well explained. Also consider to hire a professional solution to make this kind of large sitemap. ThomasShulz is very present around here and will certainly help you with your sitemap.
IMHO 1. yes 2. XML 3. 50,000 on google 4. yes 5. no, but put it in your robots file. 6. yes 7. no idea.... 8. I have only see positive things from doing it. 9. You can make a sitemap that is an index of sitemaps, but I have not tried it yet myself...
Keep this in mind.... some say that submitting your sitemap to google everytime you update is a bad thing. In some peoples oppinion, if your site was really good, and doing well on its own, you wouldnt have a need to keep pestering google to update its caches of your pages. make your own decisions, but keep that in mind.
Thanks for the kind words A1 Sitemap Generator should be able to handle 900.000 URLs when configured for large websites. (I know some who scan larger websites with A1SG. However, they are also using strong computers.) The A1SG 30 days trial is fully functional, and if anyone ever encounters any problems, feel free to email/pm me
i use plain txt files for my sitemap, 1 url per line 50k per txt file, i have 11 million urls in my sitemaps
Hi, How much pages did it helped you to index? Do I need to put it in some kind of order? Does Yahoo and Live support sitemap.txt as well?
it's a new site so i'm currently waiting. worked well for other sites i've worked on. i put mine in a certain order but, probably does not matter to google. yahoo supports urllist.txt and live supports sitemap.txt. i also have a link to sitemap.txt in my robots file. it's easier for me to update the sitemap as i build and i know i'll have every page in my sitemap file. i update sitemap.txt then resave as urllist.txt then resubmit.
Though you submit all the pages of your website through sitemap ,It will not index google algorithms uses fresh content for its users.Their less probability for your pages to index.Make sure you lot of seo work to your gives better results
There IS a limit. And no Webmaster Tools does not contribute to quality of your indexing in any way. It is a monitoring tool. Make great sites with lots of great content, and they will get indexed. Put yourself in Google's shoes, would you want to index your website in the best website database in the world?